What is the Determining Factor for VAS growth?

Qwerty keypad handsets that are in vogue enable easy chatting and access to social networking sites considering the booming growth of Facebook and Orkut in India and abroad. It is worth mentioning that Orkut has 15.5 mn users while Facebook has 10.4 mn as of December. The number which is exponentially increasing is providing a lucrative market for low-end handset manufacturers.

Vale Added Services should be of real value addition to general customers. Nowadays, umpteen services that are of little or no real value to majority customers are being pushed by every operator. How many of you really bother to look in the messages you are getting from your service provider and other franchisees about various ads, meaningless Jokes, so called Adult Services, "Astrology" " Love and IQ etc.," "Sight seeing & Travel advices" "Real Estate", Various Mutual Fund and Stock options, Video Games, and what not.

As a result of the unethic price war, ARPU has fallen much for every company. I can visualize the intellectual struggle the Product Management Groups are going through for their survival. Most of these products offered in the name of VAS are of no value to 90% of the customers.   Even the few who try these will not continue using it long.   

The few useful VAS such as higher data enabled broad band facility for Internet access to Tweet and U'Tube and other Chat services, Stock Market, Mobile Money management, Mobile phone integrated health check facility, etc. are yet to be realized fully and what is available are beyond the reach of the bulk users who bring greater part of revenue to company.

Therefore, it is necessary to provide VAS that really add value and also available for use at low cost to general public, and then only bring real benefit of VAS to common user and the Service provider.

If Operators can further reduce their data costs + offer free wifi spots the VAs usage will definitely increase

Consumers must be made aware of the cool free apps that they can download and use for a better web experience on their handsets. Interesting apps will make them use services

Next wave of growth in telecom subscribers is expected from rural India. Handset vendors are opening up options which are easy to use as well as quite affordable. The base of the pyramid (BoP) is the driver for this mobile revolution with 100 mn users today; and by 2012, it is expected to add over 60% of the total telecom subscriber base, according to a recent report. Hoping to lead with VAS enabled handsets in India, Spice Mobiles launched a VAS enabled handset S-940 to attract the BoP subscribers.